Thousands march in 12 Australian cities to demand end to country’s ‘cruel asylum-seeker policies’

A crowd of 15,000 people marched through downtown Melbourne to demand the Australian government close the immigrant processing centers in Nauru and Manus Island, following harsh criticism of human rights abuses by PM Tony Abbott’s government.

Demonstrators on the march, from Parliament House to Queen
Victoria Gardens, called for the government to change its policy
on asylum-seekers.

Churchgoers of different denominations were united in the march,
walking together with residents and former refugees.

Residents in 12 Australian cities took part in street protests
Sunday, held across the country and in 19 cities abroad, all
demanding that the refugees be released from the immigrant
processing centers.

One former refugee, who had come to Australia as an orphaned
child from Afghanistan, said the government displays no dignity
or compassion in its treatment of asylum-seekers.

"This same government continues to damage our national image
and hurt our reputation… We desperately need leaders with a
humane approach who offer care and protection to those who need
peace and security,” he told Melbourne’s The Age newspaper.

The issue is over a government policy of compulsory detention of
asylum seekers, as well as ill treatment and a lack of basic care
for the thousands it detains in places such as Nauru, a tiny and
inhospitable island in the Pacific Ocean.

Both the immigraton centers received scathing reviews from the
Moss report and the review by the Human Rights Commission. The
latter was especially harsh, with allegations of sexual abuse and
rape happening at Nauru.

"We are not nasty and we are not cruel but our asylum seeker
policies are. We are the only country in the world that subjects
children to automatic and indefinite detention," Daniel
Webb, from the Human Rights Law Centre, told participants at the
rally in Melbourne.

Prime Minister Abbott has denied that his government is
responsible for systematic human rights abuses of children and
torture of detainees, and in early March hit back at the UN
report.

In the report are also allegations that the government’s policy
of targeting Sri Lankan and Tamil groups for deportation is
having a detrimental effect on escalating the violence in
Australia’s offshore processing centers – a breach of the
country’s international obligations under the Convention against
Torture.

Abbott shot back, telling the Sydney Morning Herald that
“Australians are sick of being lectured by the United
Nations, particularly given that we have stopped the boats, and
by stopping the boats, we have ended the deaths at sea.”

But the government has since been publicly attacked for its
strong reaction.